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Ramzi wrote:
Dacicus wrote:
Ramzi wrote:
If he told me he was a theist philosopher, and believes in God for good reason, I would ask him what those reasons are and dismiss them one by one.
Ramzi wrote:
This conversation would merely be to understand him and his faith better, but not to discover truths about the real world.
I'd say this puts you in the "people who aren't willing to change their axioms" category.
That's rich. I'd say there is a fair division between atheists who were born into believing families and atheists who were born into atheistic families. I'm of the prior. This means I had to counter my family, education, and society. I doubt you were born atheist and reasoned your way to such irrational beliefs. Don't tell me about open-mindedness.
I think Ramzi's point about atheists being raised in believing vs non-believing families is a good one.
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I can't listen to this right now, but I will as soon as I get home.
I agree with Bisqwit about the language thing, it's incredibly difficult to understand the lyrics immediately. Just now, I looked through the lyrics of As I Write, the only song I've listened to repeatedly, and it made me realize I still only knew like 30% of the lyrics :) Which obviously makes it tough to fully appreciate it.
Anyway, while hip-hop certainly isn't in my "zone" either, I'm looking forward to listening to this.
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For what it's worth, we seem to have left the original discussion and started arguing whether or not god exists, and other similar topics. I guess you can discuss whatever you want, including evolution, from here on out.
Edit: The creation-evolution controversy link Truncated posted was a very good read (as I'm sure the other links were to, this was the only one I checked out).
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Yes, as thread maker, I ban evolution talk from this thread! Feel free to start your own threads though, if interested enough.
I think it's interesting to note by the way that here in Sweden, christianity has reached the point I'm considering "almost non-existant" already. Which isn't really "almost non-existant" I guess, but it's what I was comparing to when starting this thread.
Among my friends from high school (and earlier in life as well), there have been plenty of religious immigrants, which has mostly meant muslims. I have known exactly one religious Swedish christian in school, and she was made fun of a lot because of it, that's how uncommon we considered it. All in good fun though, because everyone loved her, and she didn't mind bla bla irrelevant. I just think it's interesting how uncommon it is to find christians in my age group here.
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Bob A wrote:
People will eventually realise that some things are unknown, and the fakey religious explanations are unsatisfactory. I'm pretty sure that (organised) religion will die out eventually, though superstition and charlantry will probably live on forever in some degree.
Prediction: Islam will be the last religion to die out, perhaps in a spectacular manner.
I probably agree with this prediction by the way. The level of education/welfare/other fancy words in some islamic countries are lagging behind significantly compared to North America and Europe.
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adelikat wrote:
Question for those who think religions will die out. Are there any major religions that have ever died out in the past? and why did they? Answers to those question would certainly help make better predicitons in the future.
I am of the opinion that history teaches us very little on this, since (I've said this before, just restating) it's in the past few hundred years people in general have started to become well-educated enough to not need superhuman explanations (etc, everything we've discussed in this thread).
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adelikat wrote:
Fabian, the fact that religions evolve increases their "chance of survival". I think it is reasonable to think that will also increase their chance of survival in the future. My point is that this makes your prediction "weaker" in that it is much harder to reliably make such a prediction.
also,
Science will never obsolete religion but on the contrary it encourages it. Science relies on asking the unexplainable then attempting to explain it. As a result there will always be something left unexplained (unless you believe that perfect knowledge it obtainable). Religion in some form will always be there to deal with the unexplained.
Yeah, I don't disagree with anything here. I agree that it's tough to make this kind of prediction with any sort of accuracy, and accuracy is not something I'm claiming.
I also agree that there will always be things that are unexplainable. However, I question that these unanswered issues/questions will be significant enough to people in general to warrant a religion like the big ones (christianity, judaism, islam, etc) we have now and have had for the past few thousand years, eventually.
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You didn't read what I've posted in this thread, did you?
I quote:
"As time has progressed since the time of jesus, people (I mean both every individual and, more importantly, society as a whole) has gradually become more well educated in all areas of life (scientific discoveries, better understanding of pretty much everything, etc). This development has been most significant in the past maybe 200 years, since the industralization. I think it's safe to say that in this period of time mankind has taken some pretty huge steps forward in terms of development.
Arguably, 2000 years ago the primary reason for religion was the need to have something (a being, an entity, a force, or whatever) to explain all things which were unexplainable by contemporary science, everything ranging from death to lightning. Since then, religion has been extremely valuable for the people in power to scare people into obedience and keeping them in check.
In the past maybe 150 years, the general education and understanding of things have increased, to a point where these reasons for religion does no longer exist to the same extent as they did 2000 years ago. There's no longer a need for an explanation of the unexplainable, and with Joe Everyman's education and understanding of the world now (compared to maybe 1000 years ago), there's no need to believe in something superhuman to explain our existence."
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Here's what I mean. I said (paraphrasing) "there's no longer a need for religion to explain the unexplainable" while you say "there is". Which is fine, we disagree slightly on that point is all.
The fact that religions have evolved is of course not a matter of opinion. The effect of this upcoming evolving we can expect in the next 75 (or whatever) years, however, is. Or speculation or whatever, you know what I mean.
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adelikat, most of the stuff you write is opinion stuff so there's nothing to argue about there (although I've covered the first two points in my earlier posts, so you know I don't necessarily agree too much about them), however:
4) No.
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Bob A, I'm beginning to think you're completely right about the Europe vs US thing. It will probably take longer in the US, like maybe 125-150 years or so, depending on what exactly it is I mean by "almost completely non-existant" or however I phrased it.
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Bisqwit wrote:
moozooh wrote:
By the way, why such an enormous rerecord count?
There was a lot of work.
The millions (literally!) of rerecords done by BisqBot were not included in this count, as they were done on a separate copy of the movie.
Wow. I assumed the high rerecord count was because of the robot work. That's a pretty damn high number then! Cool.
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Boco wrote:
Dacicus wrote:
I consider atheism, evolutionism, etc. as organized religions.
Wake up. "Atheism" is a religious statement, not a religion. There are atheist religions, like secular humanism, some sects of Buddhism, etc. But there is no religion called "atheism".
"evolutionism" what?
As for the original topic, absolutely not all organised religions will not disappear so suddenly. Many religions have growing, not dropping, membership.
Interesting. Which religions? Any sources/links?
One thing though. I would guess an increase in membership numbers would primarily be explained by a rapidly growing overall population, and if we looked at percentages, it might tell a different story. Do you think this is correct?
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The pre-Deku Tree segment was improved 31 seconds, is that right? Isn't that like 4-5 minutes of play?
If this is the case, I must say that is pretty awesome.
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You might be right about the percentage of knowledge thing, although I'd guess no. It doesn't matter at all though. Don't really understand why it was brought up either.
Anyway, cool, glad we sorted out the misunderstandings. Do you agree or disagree with my prediction by the way?
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Hyena wrote:
Fabian wrote:
Guys, guys, chill out please. Let's not turn this into a regular religion-flamefest. The point here is certainly not to discuss if the bible is true of if a christian god exists. The point is to discuss whether or not you think my prediction about religion becoming almost non-existant in 75 years time is true or not.
Not that I mind a slight thread hijack or anything, but just think about it guys.
I agree. I'm sorry if I sidetracked the topic. As I stated earlier, the last thing I want is a flamewar.
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Guys, guys, chill out please. Let's not turn this into a regular religion-flamefest. The point here is certainly not to discuss if the bible is true of if a christian god exists. The point is to discuss whether or not you think my prediction about religion becoming almost non-existant in 75 years time is true or not.
Not that I mind a slight thread hijack or anything, but just think about it guys.
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Some great thought provoking discussion so far guys, keep it up!
Also, Dacicus, two things:
By "organized religion", I'm thinking about christianity, judaism, islam, etc etc. The big widespread religions.
Also, this "I assume that you're using a different definition of "religion" than I am. Everyone has a religion, but not every religion mentions God, the supernatural, etc. Therefore, the trend, if it exists, is more toward religions without supernatural elements. " quote is partly contradicting the definition you yourself posted earlier ("esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies"), but it's not a big deal so don't worry about it.
However, the quote of yours of everyone having their own religion (what I just quoted above) obviously has nothing to do with the discussion at hand, since we're specifically discussing religions with "supernatural elements" (your quote).
The second thing is this statement:
"I wonder if people are truly better-informed than 500 years ago. There is certainly more knowledge than 500 years ago, but I don't believe that the general populace has access to the majority of that knowledge. Even the knowledge that they do access through the mass media is partial, since each author has his or her own agenda."
I think this is a truly, truly ridiculous thing to state. I'm not saying this in a condescending way at all, all I'm saying is I can't imagine you've thought it through properly. Consider an average man in Britain (or wherever) in the year 1506 and everything he knows about the world, ranging from understanding what lightning is (an example I brought up in an earlier post) to various scientific stuff (chemistry or physics or math/algebra whatever). Consider that he probably has never been farther away from home than a day or two of travel. Consider he probably knows nothing about the world outside of Britain, and likely very little of the world outside of his village/town. Consider he can't read or write and has no schooling in any subjects. Also, the world is flat at this point.
To say that this man does not have less knowledge than you or me or the average Joe in 2006? I'm sure you'll agree that's a bit much after thinking about it some more, right?
And as kind of a sidenote, "mass media" has very very little to do with what people know today, aside from news reporting.
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Dacicus wrote:
[quote="
Fabian wrote:
The trend of religion becoming less popular is pretty noticeable, and I think it will only continue, at a faster pace as man's general knowledge keeps growing at a faster pace.
You're saying that knowledge necessarily makes religions that include the part after "esp. when considered" in the above definition less popular. That is not the case. Scientific knowledge can be interpreted in a way that agrees with the Bible. It all depends upon what unprovable assumptions you're using to interpret the data.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the case, I'm saying that people being more well-informed than they were say 500 years ago has led many people to not believing in any religion. My opinion on whether or not this is reasonable or correct is irrelevant, I'm just stating that this is a very noticeable trend, and that I believe it will continue. Which is what led to my prediction in the original post.
